Dhru Purohit Show - Why Focusing on Muscle is the Key to Losing Weight & Building a Healthy Body Composition with Sal Di Stefano

Episode Date: July 20, 2023

This episode is brought to you by WHOOP and BiOptimizers Magnesium Breakthrough. Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with personal trainer and co-founder of Mind Pump Media, Sal Di Stefano, to get his hot take on all things fitness, mindset, nutrition, and motivation. In this episode, Sal shares how to make fitness a part of your daily routine without wasting too much time or energy. He also breaks down common misconceptions about resistance training, muscle-building, and fat loss.  Sal Di Stefano started as a trainer at the young age of 18. His passion for fitness and his love of people quickly propelled him to open some of the largest big-box gyms in the California Bay Area. At the age of 24, he opened a wellness-based fitness studio that offered hormone, nutrition, gut health specialists, and fitness trainers. During this time, Sal developed his behavioral-focused approach to helping his clients achieve long-term success and solve their most persistent problems with health and fitness. Sal is one of the most highly sought-after experts in fitness, and his practical and easy-to-execute communication style. He is the co-host of Mind Pump Podcast, the world's number-one fitness and health podcast, and has been a guest on hundreds of top podcast shows and frequently speaks at trainer and health practitioner events.  In this episode, Dhru and Sal dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): -Focusing on building muscle instead of counting calories (2:20 /00:00)  -Eating more to lose weight (6:30 / 6:13) -How the fitness industry has misled women (13:20 / 11:30)  -Your metabolism’s natural adaptation to fitness (22:58 / 21:31) -The perfect amount of stress to allow your body to adapt and get stronger (31:00 / 31:00) -The proper application of nutrition and exercise (35:21 / 34:30) -Longevity and building muscle (40:03 / 35:30) -What everyone should know about diet, calories, sugar, and metabolism (44:13 / 41:52)  -Easy ways to integrate movement and exercise into your daily life (57:00 / 56:02) -Dhru’s journey with getting his parents to start strength training (1:06:35 / 1:03:53 ) -Fundamental movements for longevity (1:23:56 /  1:19:00) -Changing your relationship with food (1:29:11 / 1:25:24) -Common sources of overeating (1:40:52 / 1:38:00) -Sal’s health journey (1:53:20 / 1:52:00) Also mentioned in this episode: -Mind Pump Podcast -MAPS Fitness Programs For more on Sal Di Stefano, follow him on Instagram @mindpumpsal and Twitter @mindpumpsal. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker and health coaching platform that monitors your physiology 24/7 and provides customized recommendations based on your body needs. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com and get your first month free. Magnesium Breakthrough really stands out from the other magnesium supplements out there. BiOptimizers is offering my community 10% off + a special gift with purchase, just head over to magbreakthrough.com/dhru, with code DHRU10. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you build some muscle, you become more insulin sensitive. Becoming more insulin sensitive means you're going to have less of those ups and downs. And we know those ups and downs affect how we feel. And a big thing that we don't focus on when we talk about nutrition that I learned a lot as a trainer was how food makes you feel is paramount. Because I could tell you what to eat all day long. I could give you the perfect amount of calories. But if you have a relationship with food where if you feel irritable,

depressed, sad, you reach for something to comfort yourself. Well, if I can get you to feel a little bit better, you're more likely to make conscious decisions that are better for you. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Sal DeStefano, and he's here to continue our summer weight loss and body composition series

by sharing his practical steps on how to get results not only quickly, but more directly and how to forever break free of the yo-yo diet and fitness culture. Now, a little bit more about Sal. Sal started as a professional in the fitness industry as a trainer at the age of 18. At the age of 24, he left the commercial gym industry to open his own fitness and wellness studio after he became dissatisfied with the big box gym approach to health and fitness. He wanted to bring a wellness-based, well-rounded approach to people. This approach led to the opening of a new gym and long-term success with his clients, and he developed a behavioral-focused approach towards health and fitness, which he'll be discussing today.

After a decade of running his own studio, he met his friends Doug, Adam, and Justin, and they launched the Mind Pump podcast, which quickly became the number one fitness and health podcast in the world. Currently, Sal is one of the most sought-after experts in fitness and health, with his effective, grounded, and easy-to-understand style of communication. He has been on hundreds of top podcast episodes, and, for you know, frequently speaks at trainer and health practitioner events. His deepest passion and goal is to make the fitness industry, one that's a force for good with long-term health being the focus

and not one that is riddled with diet pills, crash diets, and false promises. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode with Sal DeStefano. Sal, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here. I want to jump right in. You know, I heard you say once online, and it fascinated me. When it comes to the concept of losing weight and belly fat, instead of focusing on calories first with your clients, you actually focus on building muscle.

Yeah. Is that true? Yeah, 100%. So there's two reasons for that. Now, let's little context. So I trained everyday people as a personal trainer for over two decades. And I had a deep passion. I still do for helping people.

And so through that process, I mean, you're talking about 20 years, through that process, you start to kind of learn what works and what doesn't work. Now, there's what works in textbooks and in studies, and then there's what works in the real world. And what I mean by works isn't necessarily just do they lose weight, but rather are they able to keep it off and keep it off forever? Am I able to create a sustainable approach for this person and help them develop a relationship with exercise and nutrition that lasts? forever because a lot of people don't know this, but the fail rate with weight loss is close to 90%. So we don't have a problem losing weight. We have a problem keeping it off. Everybody's focused on how do I lose it? Nobody's looking at the big problem, which is, okay, once I lose it, then what happens? And what's going on? Why can't we keep it off? And a lot of it has to do with

how we lose the weight, the approach that we have. So the first reason, it's going to sound kind of silly. But the first reason why I would focus on, I guess, the fitness aspect or building muscle in particular was it was easier. It's easier for me to help you build muscle if you're seeing me two days a week as a trainer than it is for me to get you to alter and change your nutrition that you're going to deal with every single day when I'm there, when I'm not there, when you're stressed, when you're tired, when you're at a party or whatever. So that's number one. Number one, let's start with the things that I know as a trainer or a coach. I have a little. I have a little a little more control over, and things that actually require less from you to get the ball rolling.

So that's number one. But then here's number two. If I can get your body to build muscle, we could start to move your body in a more advantageous position from a few different standpoints. One, you become more, it becomes more metabolically advantageous, okay? Muscle burns calories. And if I can get your body to burn more calories, later on, it's going to be easier to sustain because you can eat more. and maintain a leaner body. Speed up your metabolism, if you will.

I know there's a lot of debate and discussion about how much you can speed up your metabolism. And we have studies that show that a pound of muscle only burns, let's say, X amount of calories. And some people argue it's more than that. I think it's far more complex than people realize. Yes, muscle by itself burns more calories. But there is a flexibility, a metabolic flexibility that exists within our bodies. with the current lean body mass that we have. Okay, so you can take somebody, have them gain no muscle or lose no muscle, maintain the same

lean body mass, but through other methods, through sleep, changes in hormones, behaviors, you know, how, what kind of signals you're sending your body? Do you want it to build muscle? Do you want it to conserve calories? You can burn more or less calories. Then on top of that, you have just the fact that more muscle. burns more calories because it's so metabolically active in comparison to other tissues of the body. Like body fats, very easy to maintain.

Muscle, much more expensive from a caloric standpoint. So when I get the person to start building muscle, I'm starting to also speed up the metabolism. In that process, as we start to talk about nutrition, the goal is not to take things away, but rather to add things to start to fuel or support, I should say, that new strength and that new muscle. Also, there's a behavioral component to that with the nutrition component, which is, behaviorally speaking, people tend to be better or it tends to be more successful telling someone to add something to their diet than it is to tell them to take away. Now, I know people who understand calories, probably listening and saying that makes no sense, you want someone to lose weight, you're telling them to eat more. And I'm going to say yes, but it's a bit of a sneaky approach. So to give you an example, I would tell somebody, we're not going to cut your calories,

but what I want you to do is I want you to eat 30 grams of protein with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I want you to eat that first and then eat whatever else you want afterwards. Now, I know as a trainer, and I'm sure you know this as well, and we know this now, the literature is pretty clear, that protein is extremely satiety producing. It fills you up. It makes you not want to eat anymore. It also tends to regulate blood sugar.

And blood sugar fluctuations tend to cause behavioral changes that tend to make us want to either overeat or eat things that tend to be hyper-palatable, which then contribute to overeating. So I would tell them to aim for 30 grams of protein and eat that first. And without them realizing it, they would end up eating less calories overall. Plus, they get the protein that they need to fuel that muscle growth. there's also a confidence that comes from seeing objective progress in the gym. Or yesterday you could do two pushups and today now you could do three or four. I would make sure to paint the picture for the client or point this out.

And I would say things like, you know, last week you were able to, you know, lift 50 pounds and this week you were able to lift 60 pounds. Do you know what that means? And they would say, well, I'm stronger. I said yes, but fundamentally it means you're a different person. You're not the same person you were last week. That's very powerful for somebody who's trying to change themselves in fundamental ways. And then there's the hormonal component that comes from the process of building muscle.

And we can go, we can get into the weeds with this. But the one that I like to focus on has most to do with insulin sensitivity. Muscle is very insulin sensitive. In fact, there's studies that they've done with obese individuals where they have them lose no weight. They simply have them gain some muscle, and we see significant improvements in insulin sensitivity. Muscle is a place where we store glycogen, right? We could store those carbohydrates and sugars that we eat.

It's also insulin sensitive because insulin has an anabolic effect to it. So when you build some muscle, you become more insulin sensitive. Becoming more insulin sensitive means you're going to have less of those ups and downs. And we know those ups and downs affect how we feel. feel. And a big thing that we don't focus on when we talk about nutrition that I learned a lot as a trainer was how food makes you feel is paramount because I could tell you what to eat all day long. It could give you the perfect amount of calories, grams of proteins, fats, carbohydrates. I could tell you all those things. But if you have a relationship with food where if you feel

irritable, tired, depressed, sad, whatever, you reach for something to comfort yourself, well, if I can get you to feel a little bit better, you're more likely to make decisions, conscious decisions, eventually become unconscious so you can develop patterns. But initially, you're more likely to develop or to make choices that are better for you. And so this was the beginning of the process, the beginning of the process. So you come hire me. I want to lose 30 pounds and I'm going to tell you we're going to do that. But first, let's focus on getting you strong.

And then from there, we'll see what happens. And it was a far more successful approach. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. Now, who doesn't want to feel great, live longer, and perform at their maximum potential? I know I do, which is why I started working out on the regular. But so much of getting fitter and stronger comes down to personalization. This is why I love, love, love, whoop. whoop is a fitness wearable and companion app that specializes in breaking down your recovery,

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Head on over to join.wop.com slash drew to get your first month free on whoop. That's join. Dot whoop.com slash dhru for your first month of whoop free. This episode is brought to you by buy. optimizers. You know, I've had a bunch of experts on my podcast talk about the insane benefits of magnesium. This super mineral powers 600 plus enzymatic reactions in the body. That means if you're not getting enough of it, and most people aren't, 600 plus enzymatic reactions cannot function properly. To quote my dear friend, Sean Stevenson, a magnesium deficiency can spell disaster if you're not

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So many powerful takeaways in that. I'd love to tease a few of those things out. But first I want to start off with this is that some people might be looking at you if they're watching on YouTube. They might be thinking, okay, great, this guy's training other guys. But you told me while we were chatting initially that actually most of your clients initially to start were women. Yes, the vast majority.

And so this is something that is not just for men. but this is something that you've had proven experience with women as well. Yeah, no, I would say over the two, two, two and a half decades of training people and managing gyms, probably 70 to 80 percent of my clients were female. I didn't train in bodybuilder gyms. I didn't work. I had some athletes that I worked with. But the vast majority of people I trained were everyday people.

So these were big globo gyms that I managed and ran. These were people who had families and kids and they worked and they want to lose weight and feel better. And they hired me and I worked with them. So that's the vast majority of my experience. You know, what's interesting about the comment that you made, which I want to touch on, and this is just, it's very common. We've done a mass, and I say we, the fitness industry has done a massive, massive disservice to women. we have painted one of the most effective and powerful and just easiest to sustain forms of exercise as a form of exercise for men who want to build big muscles.

This is what bodybuilders do. This is what athletes do. All you other people want to be fit, healthy, and just lose weight. Don't pay attention to this. That other stuff is for those extreme meatheads, for example. And that's terrible because, you know, men and women have both been lied to by the fitness industry, but women far more so. I mean, I remember the first gym that I became a trainer of at the age of 18.

I walked in there. This was a 24th Fitness in San Jose. And it was one of their flagship clubs. I remember walking in there, getting hired. And there was a women's only area within the gym. They used to do this in gyms back in the 80s and 90s, right? And I walked into the women's area for the first time because now I'm a trainer so I can go throughout the whole gym. And the equipment in there was identical to the equipment that was out into the general floor.

The difference was the upholstery was pink and the dumbbells were covered in like some, you know, like pink or purple rubber. And I remember thinking even this as an 18 year old trainer. How condescending that we're, you know, we're telling women this is where they need to work out. and all we did was color at pink. And I remember the information that was communicated, you still hear this a lot to women was, you know, don't lift weights like this, because you'll get big and bulky and masculine.

What you should do is grab those two pound dumbbells and do 5,000 reps, feel the burn. This is going to develop, you know, sculpted, toned, long, lean looking muscles. By the way, I love saying this. This always gets people if they haven't heard this before. toned, the way that the fitness industry uses it, is a completely invented made-up marketing term. Now, toned exists as a word.

It just means a muscle's ability to contract. But tone, the way we use it is like, it's different than building somehow. Like, toning means you don't have big muscles. They're just nice and firm. Muscles build or they shrink. They don't tone. Toning is just building to a smaller degree. So really what we're telling women to do is build muscle.

But we just repackaged it in a way that was easier to sell. And then we changed workouts so that they weren't so afraid of maybe looking like, I don't know, Arnold Schwarzenegger or something like that. So, but no, the majority of my clients were women. I loved, you know, shattering their paradigms around exercise and how to approach it. And I became very successful in doing so in creating behaviors and routines for people that they were able to maintain. favorite comment that I would get from people, I love hearing this and it became quite common after

was they would come to me and say, Sal, I'm getting leaner, but I don't feel like I'm working that hard. Like, this is really weird. Like, what's happening? How is my body working this way? And I tell them, I say, you know, the difference is what you did before or what you were doing before is you were fighting against your body. And every time your body would send you a signal that what you were doing wasn't working so

well, you just pushed it harder. What we're doing is we're working with your body's natural abilities to adapt. We understand how they work. We work with them. So at the time you do spend in here is effective and efficient. And we're getting your metabolism and your hormones to work in a way to where you don't have to kill yourself every day in the gym. You don't have to starve yourself every day to try to be fit and healthy. This is something that's sustainable. So again, one of my favorite things you hear from people is that that quote right there that's incredible you know some of what I'm really hearing from you and having kind of gone deep into your content over last month as I've been anticipating this interview is that both for men and women but in particular I'd share with you that

my audience skews female that if you are really serious about wanting to lose a little bit of weight and that obviously fits into the conversation of body composition yes because anybody could lose weight just by not eating for a short period of time or just way too much fasting, which is not good for you. But if you're serious about body composition, which the fat loss being a part of that and building muscle, if you're not strength training in some capacity, and we'll go through that, I'd love to hear like if somebody's just started, okay, if they have a little bit of experience, you know, what's the best approach to that? We'll get to that in a second. You're really doing yourself a disservice because your only levers that you're pulling are, you know, the diet side of things

and maybe a little bit of stress if people are paying attention to that as well, right? You're doing yourself a disservice because you're not taking advantage of the fact that muscle does all these things that you talked about before. Yeah, so let's talk about weight for a second because people are so focused on the scale, especially women, because we've looked at that number and that number to us means something. I used to love telling people this. I'd say, I want to lose weight. And I'd say, okay, what kind of weight?

And they'd look at me like, what are you talking about? So, well, we could cut your leg off and you'd lose weight. But that's obviously not the weight that you want to lose. Now, of course, that's an extreme example. But body composition is what matters. If you took a 150-pound woman at 35% body fat, let's say 5'4, 4, and you took another woman who was 5, 4, 150 pounds, but her body fat percentage would say 20%. Same body weight.

They would look vastly. different. They wouldn't even look the same. In fact, most people would guess that the 20-something percent body fat female weighed a lot less. This is because muscle takes up less space than body fat on a pound for pound basis. Something like, if you were to lose 10 pounds of body fat now and gain 10 pounds of body fat, excuse me, 10 pounds of muscle, so replace 10 pounds of body fat with 10 pounds of muscle, you would lose roughly a quarter of the size of your body. Okay. So you weigh the same, but you're a lot smaller. But there's more to it than just that.

That muscle obviously makes you more mobile. So that's great. You're stronger, more functional. Feels different on the body. Looks very different on the body. It improves your hormone profile. So it balances out things like estrogen and progesterone, growth hormone, helps modulate cortisol. So it's more appropriate.

It helps regulate testosterone, which is all. also important women, not just in men. By the way, testosterone women, same functions that you find in men. It helps with motivation. It helps with, you know, feeling drive, libido, you know, energy, those types of things. So that muscle does a lot of things. But you weigh the same, right? You weigh the same.

I used to have this trainer that worked for me, this female trainer that I used to use, and it used to, we used to laugh about this. She was like, one of my favorite sales tools because I would get a potential member of the gym that I'd give a tour to, and let's say it was a woman, and we would talk about the gym, and sometimes they'd say, oh, I'm not interested in the weights at all. I just want the cardio and the aerobics classes. And we'd talk all about strength training, and I'd explain to them, and they'd still be like, no, no, no, I'm not interested. And then I would do this challenge. I'd say, okay, I'm going to call in one of my trainers, and if you could guess her body weight within 10

pounds, I'll give you a free membership for the next three months. And they would say, I'll take that challenge. And I'd page this trainer. And then she would walk in. She was like 5'2, very sculpted, very fit. And I'd say, guess, her body weight. And they would all guess like 100 pounds, 110 pounds. Then I'd have her stand on the scale. I forgot how much she weighs, like 135 pounds.

It always blow their mind. And I'd say, you know, muscle and body fat look very, very different. So the scale just tells you total body mass. It doesn't tell you, you know, what it's made up of. So I want to paint, first I want to explain that. because as we talk about muscle, I know people who are trying to lose weight when they hear more muscle to them, they just feel like I'm going to get bigger. I'm going to be a bigger version of me just with more muscle. Yeah, yeah.

No, it doesn't work that way. Now let's talk about the weight loss approach. The weight loss approach, if you look at it from its absolute most basic viewpoint, it's a calories in versus calories out equation. Now, it's obviously far more complex than this, okay? The human metabolism or mammalian metabolism is extremely complex. And calories in versus calories out is like telling somebody who is in poverty, just make more money and save more money, right? It's like way more complex than just that.

But that part's still true. So the calories in versus calories out, that is true. What it makes up of or what contributes to it is very complex. But let's talk about calories in versus calories out. We understood that equation for a long time. And so we said, okay, we're dealing with an obesity epidemic. People want to lose weight. We need to reduce their calories.

And we need to have them burn more calories. So the calorie reduction part, let's have a meat less. Okay, that's what they said with diet. And we can get into that, but there's far more effective and less effective ways of doing that. But then they looked at the calories outside of the equation. And what they said was, okay, movement burns calories. So let's look at all the forms of exercise. And the most valuable ones would be the ones that burn the most calories.

And that's what we're going to tell people to do. And it sounds like it makes sense, right? Like, okay, if I'm trying to lose weight, trying to burn more calories, I should just pick the form of exercise that burns the most calories. The problem with that is it completely negates a very important factor with exercise. which is exercise gets your body to adapt. And those adaptations mean a lot. They mean a lot.

Okay. So if I pick a form of exercise that just gets me to burn a lot of calories, let's say running, that's phenomenal. Now I'm burning a lot of calories. Except my body's adaptation process is going to say this. We need more endurance. We need more stamina. We need to conserve more calories.

We've got to be able to do this activity well and more efficiently. That's what your body is trying to do with that form of exercise. So you build stamina and endurance. You don't need much muscle at all for stamina endurance. In fact, you need very little muscle for that. So what your body does to become more efficient or slow down its metabolism, lower its calorie requirements, is it actually starts to pair muscle down, especially when you combine it with low calories. And the studies are very clear on this.

You diet and you run a lot or you diet and you do tons of, let's say, calorie burning activity. You see weight loss, but a significant portion of that weight loss is muscle. Now, there's a misconception that you're burning the muscle for energy. That's not what's happening. Your body doesn't like to burn muscle for energy except in extreme situations. What it's doing is it's just it's just pairing it down. It's becoming more efficient. This is why, and by the way, everybody, almost everybody who's ever tried to lose weight is probably

tried that approach. They've experienced the following, that initial 10-pound weight loss and then hard plateau. What happened? I'm doing three days or four days a week of this activity. I'm eating this low-calorie diet. Why did I plateau? What happened? Well, what happened was your body adapted and learned how to perform and operate on the lower calories and on the calories that you're burning with that activity. And it's very, very intelligent on how it adapts to that. And it's very intelligent on how it adapts to that. There was this incredible study that was done. They actually went and studied a modern hunter-gatherer tribe, the hodzah tribe.

I'm sure you're familiar with it because people talk about it all the time. And scientists went down and studied them and through some sophisticated testing, we're able to figure out how many calories they burned on a regular basis. Now, remember, these are hunter-gatherers, okay? So they don't have TVs and iPhones, and they got to go hunt their food, they have to gather, They have to get water. They're far more active than the average westerner. What they found at the end of the study was that they burned roughly the same amount of calories that the average Western.

Couch potato burns. And you think, well, how's that possible? Well, that's how we evolved. If humans burned six or seven thousand calories a day, as hunter gathers, we wouldn't be here. It is very hard to find calories in nature until we learned agriculture and, you know, we live in Now it's easy. Calories are really easy to find. But if you go out in the wilderness and you get a hunt for your food and gather your food, you're not going to find, excuse me, 6,000 calories a day.

Their bodies adapted. So that's essentially what we're doing when we apply the wrong strategy to try to lose weight. Our bodies quickly adapt and nothing happens. And then what we do is we try to do more the same. Well, I guess I need to do more exercise. I guess I need to cut my calories even more. Then you lose another seven pounds and you plateau again. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how unsustainable this is.

Well, what do I end up at the end of this journey? I lost 30 pounds, but I'm eating 1,100 calories a day, and five days a week, I'm on the treadmill for an hour. Most people don't want to do that forever. Or if they stop for a month, everything comes back on. It's miserable. Miserable. So what we should do with our approach with exercise is this.

What form of exercise, forget the calorie burn while I'm doing the exercise, because that's inconsequential anyway. what kind of exercise is going to do the opposite? Like what form of exercise is going to teach my body or encourage my body to adapt in a way where it becomes less efficient with calories, where it wants to burn more calories on its own where I don't have to constantly move to try to make this happen? Well, that's strength training. Nothing does it like strength training.

The process of building muscle and having the extra muscle itself. By the way, it's not just the muscle. It's also the signal to build more muscle, both of which teach my body to burn more calories. And I would see this all the time with clients. I'd have a client who would lose 30 pounds and at the end of their weight loss journey was eating more than they did when they started. And here's the other side of strength training. That's phenomenal.

You don't need to do a lot of it. With strength training, the primary benefit is the adaptation. not the calorie burn. And for most people, that looks like a couple days a week, you know. Now, if you want to move into advanced strength training and really push yourself and compete and strength sports and all that stuff, well, then you're going to need more than that. But for the average person, you can get really far with what I'm talking about with like two days a week of appropriate strength training.

So now I lost 30 pounds. I'm in the gym two days a week, maybe three days a week. And I'm eating more than I did before. that is a sustainable approach. That's the approach that I try to communicate on my podcast, and that's the one I learned with my clients. You know, I've heard you say that a lot of your clients would come in and initially their focus and their motivation is like, hey, I want to look better.

It was focused on the sort of look thing. And then through following your methodology and having this approach of sustained strength training done in a way that doesn't make you feel burnt out. We're going to talk about that in a second. Doesn't make you feel miserable. Actually might give you more flexibility in terms of what you can eat because your muscle also might be allowing you to have a little bit more flexibility in your diet. We'll get back to that in a second.

And all the other components that come in, they ended up in a place with, sure, they might have come in to look a little better and they ultimately ended up looking better because of that shift in body composition. but what had them stick to this and make it sustained is actually this approach made them feel better. Yeah. Yeah. Can you talk about that? Yeah. You know, we, the fitness space, social media now, but when I was a kid, it was magazines that we would read. It glorifies workouts like their battles, like you're going to war and you're beating yourself up and you're crawling out of the gym. And by the way, if you don't do that, well, then you'll work out.

wasn't effective. We have to reframe what exercise really is. Now, is there value in beating the crap out of yourself in the gym? Maybe sometimes. I mean, I think mental fortitude is important. We probably need more of that nowadays. But that's not what makes a workout effective at all. Exercise is simply a signal that tells your body to adapt in a particular way.

So let's use another form of adaptation as an example. Let's think of our body, our skin's ability to tan or darken when exposed to the sun. Would it be advantageous to get a tan by going outside and sunburning yourself every day? So if I go out, I need to go out there and burn really bad. That's how I'm going to get a sun tan. No, of course not. If I did that, not only would I not get a tan, I would cause lots of damage. It would be miserable experience, and I probably wouldn't want to do it anymore.

Well, for some reason, we approach exercise this way. You're going to come into the gym. You've never worked out, or maybe you have a little bit of experience, and you're going to crawl out of the gym, or you're going to be so sore that you can't move for a few days, and yay, that was a great workout. No, all you've done is created a lot of damage, and you've completely overcome your body's ability to adapt.

We, recovery and adaptation, by the way, are not the same thing. They're somewhat related, but they're not the same thing. We talk a little bit about recovery, and that's important. But there's also our body's ability to overcompensate, become better at than withstanding the same stress next time. Okay, so let me explain what I'm talking about. Recovery is healing. Adaptation is changing.

It's overcompensating. It's, I scratch my skin, I cause a little bit of abrasion. My skin heals over. That's recovery. Adaptation, I develop a little bit of a callus. Okay. You can overcome your body's ability to adapt by just getting your body to want to heal. Okay?

Beat yourself up at the gym. You get sore. Soreness kind of goes away. Go back to the gym and beat myself up again. No room for adaptation. I'm literally on a hamster wheel. Recovery damage. Recovery damage.

No adaptation. Okay. Some people take it even further and go beyond recovery. What we're looking for is the perfect amount of stress on my body to allow for the adaptation process to occur. Now, the question is, what is that perfect amount of stress? Well, boy, that's different for everybody. Okay? If you don't exercise now, it doesn't take much at all to send the signal and to get your body to adapt.

Not at all. If you sit on your couch all day long, I could have you do 10 squats, which you never do. and those 10 squats will send a signal to get your body stronger and you will adapt and you'll get stronger. And as you get stronger, the stress begins to change. The stress starts to change. This process is a slow process, but it should feel good. It should not feel like you're surviving your workouts. You know, the other part of that is we people tend to approach exercise or diet from this place of self-hate, right? Like they get motivated to start working out

because they saw a picture of themselves or they felt like they weren't attractive or inadequate. I'm fat. I'm too skinny. I'm unattractive. So the beating myself up initially is a bit cathartic as well. Like, how many times have you heard this, right? Somebody goes to the gym.

They're like, oh, man, last night, ate too much food. I got to go sweat this out. I got to go beat myself up. And then they leave and they feel like they can barely move and like, that was a great workout, right? It's like this cathartic self-flagellation from, like punishment, right? Instead, try this.

Go to the gym and think to yourself, how can I take care of myself? What's going to care for me like somebody I care about? Okay, that'll help you train yourself a little bit more appropriately. You should also feel more energy after your workout than you did before. You should leave the gym feeling better. This is when people figure this out, by the way, people like to work out in the morning. People who really figure this out like to work out before they go to work. Because when they do it, they go to work and they feel sharp and energized.

I could tackle my day. I feel great. That's how you should feel after your workouts. You should not feel like you survived. You should feel like you thrived. That will, now it's, of course, what makes up the workout and the exercises and all that we could talk about. but what I just said will direct more people in the right direction than almost anything else. You should leave the gym feeling good.

Okay. Here's the other side of that. Here's another point. If you do that and you do it right and you're starting to see results, even if they're slow, but you feel good and you kind of enjoy going, what are we doing? We're developing a relationship with exercise that you're going to want to maintain. You're going to want to continue to go. We've got to think of this in those terms.

We can't think of workouts in the terms of, I can survive this for the next few months, and then I'll figure it out afterwards. Like, if you dread going, if you hate it, if you leave and you're sore and you can't move and that self-hate eventually goes away and you just feel like crap and you're like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like, you're done. You're not going to go anymore. And then you rebel, by the way.

This is what happens is that people, you'll talk to people. and they'll say things like, you know, hey, how's your workout going? Oh, I stopped. You know, I just want to enjoy my life. Like, what? What do you mean you want to enjoy your life? The proper application of exercise and nutrition, there's almost nothing that will improve every facet of your life, literally, like simply becoming more fit and healthy in the real way

and in the appropriate way. Nothing. Think of anything, right? Your ability to parent your kids or be a partner or work or sleep, connect. with others. Like, if you're more fit and healthy, everything gets better. And yet people say, I stop because I want to enjoy my life. Well, you were doing it wrong. You were definitely doing it wrong. Wow. I hope that sinks in for a lot of people who maybe just had the wrong guidance on their approach and are now sort of waking up to see like, okay, there could be a different way to do things,

especially if I want to make this sustainable. Because it's not just about looking good, which you can do in a short period of time and through sacrifices. But there's this whole other element of all the components that come from long-term health, including improving your metabolic health and all the factors that play into strain training for longevity. Can you talk about those things? Yes. So let's first go back and talk about or let's just address kind of what you said about looking good in the short term. I also want to be very clear. If you do this the way that I'm saying it, you will look good faster and better than you would if you did it the wrong way. Because I think sometimes people feel like there's a trade. So somebody watching right now might be like,

yeah, that sounds really good, you know, what he's saying. But I just want to, I just want to get this weight off right now. Like I'm so eager. I got my wedding coming up. I got this. I got this situation. No, no. The wrong way is the wrong way in every, every facet. You're not going to get there faster by doing it the wrong way. You're not going to, you're going to get there faster and better doing it the way that I'm describing. Okay? There is a right dose when it comes to exercise. And the right dose gets you that the fastest.

More gets you there slower. Now we're compromising ability to adapt and recover. Too little. Obviously, I'm not sending this signal, a signal that's strong enough to get my body to adapt the way that I want it to. There is a right dose and more or less gets me there, slower. So I want to say that because it's a very important selling point to what I'm saying. It's also extremely true. You'll get there faster. I promise you. And it'll feel easier. And this is where people get

caught up. They think, oh, I can do more. If I do more, then I'll get there faster. No, no, no. There's the right dose and then there's what you could tolerate and then beyond. What you can tolerate is not what gets your body to adapt the fastest. What gets your body to adapt the fastest is the right dose. All right, let's talk about longevity for a second. Muscle is extremely protective. We're just now starting to figure this out, by the way. All the studies, maybe up until the last, I'd say, decade,

most the studies done on exercise and health revolved around one form of exercise. cardiovascular activity. I mean, you pick any study from, you know, 10 years ago and beyond, and all the forms of exercise, every study used cardiovascular activity. Why? I think it was the easiest to apply. It was the one everybody understood. It's easy with animals, put them on a hamster wheel. It's kind of hard to get a hamster lift weights or do yoga. So that's what we saw. So very little studies were done on strength training and muscle, and it's a protective effects, except for maybe with athletes and performance, there really wasn't anything that was out there. Well, now we have data that supports what those of us who've worked with everyday people

for a while have seen, which is that muscle is extremely important for longevity. In fact, so muscle, we can talk about strength because strength is a great proxy for muscle, okay? There's one test that we're now really starting to figure this out. And there's several studies on this. There's one metric that a doctor could use that will predict all-cause mortality better than almost any other single metric. Okay. Now, to be clear, if you want to predict all-cause mortality, you want to use multiple metrics.

That's how you're going to get the most accurate reading. But if you had to pick one, there's actually one that's better than all the others. It's a grip strength test. A simple grip strength test will tell you more about somebody's all-cause mortality than almost anything else. Why? Because, well, first, grip strength is a proxy for overall body strength, and body strength is a proxy for muscle. Well, what is that telling us? Well, a couple different things. One, mobility.

Anybody who's ever taken care of an elderly family member will tell you this. but loss of mobility is a significant contributor to mortality. There's a saying in medicine, you break your hip and you die of pneumonia. Your bone strength, your ability to care for yourself and move, this is all very, very important when it comes to longevity. And the less you can care for yourself and the less you move, the faster your health begins to decline. Well, muscle is how we move.

So strength and mobility, you need those to be able to do those things. There's also the hormone effects of muscle. We talked about insulin sensitivity, off air. You mentioned, I think you mentioned Alzheimer's dementia as type 3 diabetes. This was speculated for a while. We're just now starting to see that this is probably what's going on, that it's the brain becoming, maybe losing its ability to use glucose, the way that it could before and we start to see these, these detriments in our cognitive function and that starts

to decline very quickly after a certain period of time. Nothing improves insulin sensitivity like building muscle. Nothing. In fact, there was a study done out of Australia, Sydney, Australia, where they used strength training and they saw the halting of the progression of beta amyloid plaque in Alzheimer's patients. It was actually the first time a non-medical intervention showed that. In fact, it started to trend towards it reversing, which was kind of interesting. So insulin sensitivity, that's a big one. Let's talk about metabolism again. Here's why the amount of calories your body burns on its own is so important.

When we look at diet, we can look at components of nutrition and say, these things are healthy, these things aren't so healthy, and these things are not very healthy at all. sugar, for example. Sugar's got some utility, but there's lots of studies that will point to the overconsumption of sugar and show how it can contribute to worse health outcomes, obesity, reduced longevity, all that stuff. Certain fats, there's some controversy around saturated fat, but even the studies on saturated fat will show overconsumption can cause all these different things. I'll use those two because those are two most popular ones.

when a diet is low in calories, or let me rephrase that, when you're eating a diet that it doesn't have more calories than you can burn. Okay. So if you can burn more calories than you consume, or at least burn the calories you do consume, the negative effects that we see from things like sugar, saturated fats, and other components in food are greatly reduced, dramatically reduced. Now, it's not perfect, but there's studies, and I hate it when scientists do this. So just to make sure I understand that, sorry to interrupt you, because I know you're on a roll.

So being in a slight calorie deficit, you're saying that even the same composition of some of the macros of saturated fat, you know, fats, sugars, other things, they don't have as much damage than being in a surplus where somebody's eating more calories. Some would even argue, and I wouldn't go this far, but some would even argue that the damage is almost gone. So scientists love to do this. I love to prove people in the health and wellness space wrong. Now, I'm going to tell you why I think what they're saying is also wrong. But the data that they're showing does illustrate something really important. So they'll take, they'll do this. Well, they'll say, okay, we put this person on a fast food diet, McDonald's,

and they were only eating 1500 calories a day. And look at all their blood markers, better, you know, lipid profile. and their inflammatory markers went down and their health improved and they lost weight. And that's their way of showing those of us in the health and wellness space that you're wrong.

It's all about calories. Okay. So they're right and they're wrong. One, the right in that a calorie deficit really does make up a lot of, in terms of the damage. Makes a huge impact. Just because you're not overloading your body

with all those glucose spikes that might be coming with calories. You're not in a place where your system is always kind of having to work. You're burning it off. You're using it for energy. And that process is healthy.

The burning of energy and all that stuff is healthy. But here's why they're wrong. What you eat also determines how you feel and it also influences your behaviors. So whenever somebody presents a study like that to me and they say it's all about calories and maybe macros and what makes up those macros like proteins, fats, and carbs and calories doesn't matter as long as you hit the right numbers. I would like to see how sustainable it would. be to eat a 1,500 calorie McDonald's diet.

Yeah, for like a year, two years, three years, four years. No way. Those foods influence your behaviors. They make you want to overeat. They make you feel a particular way and how you feel determines whether or not you're going to eat one way or another. Not just to mention that, but the environmental setting. You're going to McDonald's.

You're picking something up. You feel like, oh, you know what? I've been good for like two weeks. I need to treat myself today. You know, the Sunday machine is working all of a sudden. Yeah. Let's get some of that. So there's so many factors that.

There is. But it's, but I mean, the point I'm making here is if you can get your metabolism to ramp up, it means that you can eat more overall and get away with more overall in the long term. Okay. That's a good thing. Why? Look around. I could right now on my phone while we're doing the show, I could on my phone in 10 minutes

have pretty much any flavor of any food that I want delivered here, right this second, for very inexpensive. We live in an environment where we are bombarded and surrounded by food and snacks and candy and treats and whatever. A faster metabolism is an asset. Now, if this was 50,000 years ago, this would be a very different conversation. 50,000 years ago, our conversation would be, how can we make our metabolism slower? How can we become more efficient?

Because I need to survive on the fact that, man, it is hard to find food. Today, it's like there's so much food and I could try to be a monk with my diet. This is, you know, it's one of the problems that I have with MySpace in particular. So we're talking about the fitness side of the health and wellness space is it's often communicated by these fanatics, by these like these fitness monks or gurus or I like to say that they're dysfunctional. A lot of them are orthorexics. And they communicate what works for them to the average person. So they'll say things like, it's discipline. Food is food is fuel and just do it.

It's like, the average person is like, what? Like, I don't live to exercise. I exercise to live. That doesn't make any sense to me. I can't do that. That doesn't work into the fitness fanatic or someone who's got a dysfunctional relationship with those things. They're like, just do it anyway type of deal.

So, no, we want to put ourselves in a position to where we live our lives. and, you know, Sundays I go out with my friends and we have a pizza and some beer and I go on vacation sometimes and sometimes we have ice cream. It doesn't cause all these problems because I've got a metabolism that's roaring and that kind of negates a lot of these foods and it gives me some flexibility. That's a massive asset. It makes things much more sustainable. It protects me.

Muscle protects me against the ills of modern life. Here's another thing that muscle does. we're sedatory, all of us are. You know, if you work out for an hour, seven days a week, you're sedatory. People don't realize this. If you have a normal, typical job nowadays, which is at a desk in front of a computer, and you work out one hour every single day, you are still sedatory. And you don't have anything else is what you're saying.

Yeah, no, I mean. Besides you're just normal sort of just walking around the house or whatever. Exactly. You work out in the morning for an hour, then you go to work, you sit down at your desk, for eight hours, 10 hours. Then you're driving your car, you go home, sit down, eat dinner. Maybe you walk in your house a little bit. Is that based on a specific definition?

I've heard sometimes the definition, you know, that, you know, CDC this put out there is like anything less than like 6,000 steps is sedentary. Or are you just saying evolutionary comparing to like our ancestors? We're sedentary. Compared to how our bodies evolved to move, we're very sedentary. By the way, 6,000 steps is, you know, CDC puts out interesting guidelines sometimes. times. By the way, what is common is not normal? You can look at what the average person does and be like, oh, that's normal. That's what we should do. No, no, that's just common, right?

Right, right. Yeah, modern life. It's common to be overweight today, so you can't say that that's actually normal for our biology. Yeah, we're sedentary, okay? How do I protect my body in this modern lifestyle where I'm not moving that much? Well, muscle, muscle does this for you. I'm not moving much, but I got this muscle on my body that can move when I want it to, that burns calories, that maintains my testosterone levels and makes me sensitive to insulin and growth hormone, helps regulate my cortisol, helps regulate my mood. There's chemicals in muscle when you flex and extend and stretch and just get up and move in muscle that are released that have antidepressant effects, anti-inflammatory effects on the body.

It's like an investment. Okay. Trying to burn calories by moving all day long, which, okay, you can do that if you want. I don't think it's a sustainable approach for most people. We're busy, but that's fine. But that's like trying to earn money every hour. So I have an hourly wage. The way I'm going to get wealthy is I'm going to work more and more hours.

I mean, that's one way to do it, but there's only so many hours a day. What if you took that money, put it somewhere and it made money for you? This is what muscle essentially. does for you. You know, another great thing about muscle, which is kind of cool. I used to hate this as a trainer. I would get a client that would say something like, okay, once I get in shape, then what happens if I stop working out? And I was like, well, then you get out of shape, I guess. Your body just kind of reverts back, right? There's no permanence with this. But there is something interesting about muscle that it's not permanent, but it's pretty cool, pretty close.

there's something called muscle memory. And this has been well documented in studies. If you were to gain, let's say you gain seven pounds of muscle right now, okay, which is very realistic for a male to do, let's say, over the course of maybe six months. You gain seven pounds of lean body mass. And it takes you six months of good, consistent exercise, you're feeding your body adequate protein. You gain seven pounds of muscle. And then let's say for whatever reason you lose it.

You stop working out, become very sedentary, and it's gone. You lose it in a month. Seven pounds of lean body mass is gone. If you go back to start working out again, you'll gain back that seven pounds of lean body mass in like two months, maybe a month. If you've ever had a cast on a broken limb, you've experienced this. I don't know if you've ever done that, but, you know, where you take the cast off and it's like all the muscle's gone.

You know, it looks weird. And then very quickly, the muscle comes back. There's something called muscle memory. This has to do with satellite cells and how your body prepares and preps itself to regain muscle that was once lost. So if you build some muscle, gaining a back happens very quickly. We also don't lose muscle very quickly. So if you did strength training very consistently, let's say three days a week, and it was

what you did, and then you stopped strength training for a couple weeks, you wouldn't lose any muscle within a couple weeks. It would all stay on your body. You stopped exercising for two whole weeks. You probably wouldn't lose any in a whole month as long as your nutrition was okay and you were relatively active. You wouldn't lose much at all. In fact, they did a study, I love this study, where they compared two groups of men.

One group worked out, strength trained every week, every single week consistently. The other group did three weeks on, one week off. So every month, they took a whole week off. At the end of the, I believe it was a 24-week study, the strength and muscle gains were identical. Identical. They literally worked out one-fourth. less than the other group, took a whole week off every month, and built the same strength and muscle.

There's other studies that show that however much you train to build a certain amount of strength and muscle, about one, some studies show maybe one fifth, I've seen a study that shows one ninth of the training volume is required to keep it. So you work out, let's say three days a week to get to a certain level of strength and muscle, then you're happy, go once a week. it's not going to go anywhere. You're going to keep it. Right.

Now, there's more of that, of course. There's health benefits with just moving and going and all that stuff. So you're probably not going to have the same health benefits. But from a muscle standpoint, metabolism standpoint, you know, stuff that I'm talking about, you're kind of going to keep it by doing a lot less. Now, could I possibly paint a more perfect form of exercise in the context of modern life with the average person? Think about their struggles and what they're dealing with and how challenging it is to be

consistent and there's food everywhere. And I'm not like a fanatic. I don't want to work out every single day. And, you know, like hormone imbalances. Like, boy, hormone imbalances are more common than not nowadays. Like, when you think of all those things, is there a form of exercise that is more suitable? There isn't. So, you know, this is what I'm going around preaching right now and try to explain to people. It's like, look, if you're going to choose a form of exercise and you're, you want to do this in a way that's fast and sustainable, here's the most effective approach. Everything else has got benefit. I don't want to be, you know, I don't want, I don't want to be misunderstood. All activity applied appropriately is good for you, okay? But one of them definitely

shines above the others in the context of, you know, what the average person experiences. I think it's so helpful for you to say it so clearly because there is, as more people are realizing the power of being active and not living this hyper sedentary life that we have. And they have this menu of options that are there. And there's people that are out there that are saying, hey, you know, shoot for those 10,000 steps. And walking is like at least start there. And again, there's going to be an argument for all of these different things.

And you're agreeing to that. And as you start to zoom out and you are a normal human being that's trying to eat well, but maybe still have, you know, some flexibility for your family, especially if you have kids. You are trying to make sure that you can grow in your career. You're trying to make sure you have some elements of stress management and community and maintain friendships and maintain a social life that's there. And you might have hobbies, community service. You know, these are all the different things that are there in your life. So when it comes to this exercise component and the movement component, it feels increasingly like people have a lot of different options, right? There's like

steps. There's, okay, let's do this cardio. Let's do that. And we, what I'm hearing from you is like, look, all those things can have benefits. But if you're looking for the one, especially if you're wellness oriented, which is our audience here, that pays the most dividends. We're going to first make sure before everything else we have an appropriate plan for strength training, you know, as long as you are in a place where you can, you know, do that and you're not like physically hurt and you don't, you're not like, that's the rare exception. We're going to first prioritize strength training.

and then if you have extra room and you love to get extra steps in, amazing. And you can combine that with walking with a friend and you get your social thing in good, but do not under-prioritize a strength training piece. Yeah, that should be that. And yes. And let me actually touch on a few things that you said there. One of the things I figured out as a trainer, as a coach, was, okay, all these things work. and here's the things that we need to focus on, and here's what's most effective.

But then what really helped me become successful, and any coach or trainer right now that's been doing this for over 10 years who's found a high success rate will understand completely what I'm about to say is how do I do this and communicate this in a way to where the person can make these fundamental changes and maintain them and want to maintain them, okay, want to continue doing this, that it's not this like white knuckling the whole time. You mentioned steps. Okay, I love walking. Here's why I love walking.

Number one, everybody could do it. A very low skill form of activity. Other forms of activity require a level of skill. People tend to, you know, injure themselves running, right? Running, let's go run. Well, most people don't know how to run. They haven't run since they were 10. They put on their running shoes.

They go run and they end up hurting themselves. But most people can walk. And I love walking. also because it's easy to inject into your everyday live. So when I would train clients, I would definitely do the strength training part, and that's where I would do a lot of the coaching. But then on the days they didn't see me, I would communicate activity like this. I don't want you to take 30 minutes out of your day and hop on a treadmill.

Okay, that's way less sustainable than what I'm about to say. What I want you to do is after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, go for a 10-minute walk. or for every hour you're at your desk, get up and walk for five minutes. And maybe that looks like you go to the bathroom on the second floor. So you just walk up the stairs, go to the bathroom, come back down, go back to your desk. When you add that up, what you find is about 45 minutes or 30 minutes of walking every single day. Now, why do I communicate it this way? Because it's already kind of, it's easy to inject into your life and it's combined with things that you

you already do. You know, getting on your workout clothes, going to the treadmill or going to the gym, timing yourself for 30 minutes, I got to schedule the timeout, whatever. Much harder to maintain than after you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner, just walk for 10 minutes or every hour go do a 5 to 10 minute walk in the office. Like way easier to maintain. And people would become far more consistent with that. I found similar approaches with diet, with strength training. One other thing you said about strength training that I want to touch on is, you know, so long as you're not injured and it's appropriate for you. Strength training has a lot of unique attributes.

And I say unique because other forms of exercise don't necessarily share these attributes. And one of them is that strength training can be appropriate for anyone, anyone. Now, someone might be thinking like, what are you talking about? What do you mean anybody? The number one tool in physical therapy that a physical therapist use for rehab, people who've been injured, car accidents, severe trauma is strength training. Yeah. What is strength training? Well, yeah, it's, you know, picking a barbell off the ground as strength training.

But so is using a resistance band or my body weight or creating tension against the wall, let's say. I push marm up against the wall. That would be an isometric form of strength training. Strength training is moldable like no other form of exercise. I could use any amount of weight or no weight and create resistance that can provide the benefits that I'm talking about. All strength training is is exercising in a way to promote strength, okay, to build strength. Well, when I had an 85-year-old client who would come hire me and at one point I had quite a few

people that were in advanced age to come hire me. And I'd have them sit down on a bench and I'd have them try to reach up above their head and that would be very challenging for them just to straighten their arm up above their head. Well, that was our exercise. And I'd sit behind them and I'd say straighten your arm out as hard as you can. We're going to hold that for 10 seconds. That's strength training. Strength training would be for some people going up against the wall, moving your feet away

from it and doing some pushups against the wall. It would be using a resistance band. all you're trying to do is use appropriate resistance. How do you pick appropriate? What do you do now? What's a little more than what you do now? That's appropriate. Okay.

So if you do nothing, it doesn't take much. You've been working out for years. It's going to take a little bit more. But strength training I can do on anybody. It is extremely moldable. I could shape it in any particular way I want. If I'm using bands and free weights in particular, doesn't matter how tall, short you are,

doesn't matter how your body's built. The weights, the resistance, follows you, not the other way around. So it's one of those forms of exercise that anybody can do it. I can't say that about anything else, right? Cycling, running, yoga, even swimming is inappropriate for absolutely everybody. But strength training I can do, I mean, literally, you take somebody who's very, very, let's say, deconditioned or in a state of needing rehab, simply trying to squeeze their hand with force would be a form of strength training. And that makes it such a valuable form of exercise.

But yeah, when it comes to movement, all movement is healthy. The best way to apply movement just for movement's sake is to find ways to inject it into your everyday life. This is just going to be the most sustainable way that you end up improving your health. The old, I used to scoff at this as an early trainer. And I apologize to all those first clients that I had because that wasn't great at what I did. but people would say things like, oh, I try to park at the end of the parking lot or I try to take the stairs instead of the elevator. Oh, I'd laugh at that because you're not sweating. No, no.

That's exactly what you should do on a daily basis is just find ways to do what you're going to do anyway, but move a little more. Okay. It could literally be, I'm watching TV for an hour. I'm going to stand for 20 minutes while I watch it. That's a little bit of extra movement. it could be parking further away. It could be taking the stairs instead of the elevator. It could be playing with your kids and rather than laying on the floor, you stand up and play with them.

This is what I do, right? I'm a dad in my mid-40s. I have four kids, two real little ones. And I find myself sometimes at the end of the day creating games that require me to lay on the floor because I'm tired. So it's like a dad hack when you're tired. But I get up and I say, you know what, I should move, stand up a little bit and get some. extra activity. That's the best way to inject activity into your life. And then when you get to diet, boy, I'll tell you what, nobody approaches diet the right way. No, and everybody gets stuck in the

minutia of the, what, you know, what macronutrient does what, and these foods do this, and that food does that, and you need to avoid this and you get that. And everybody's forgetting the most important part when it comes to food. The thing that humans, um, most, are challenged with, the thing that connects us to food the most, it has nothing to do with calories, macros and micronutrients, nothing to do with that. It's all about our relationship with food. That's what food means to humans. It doesn't mean anything else. It does have macronutrients and nutrients, stuff like that. And luckily, we know what that is and we can study it. But humans are eating food way before we understood that. It's about celebration.

It's about how I feel. It's about how how it may numb me, distract me, make me present. It's how it's how we share community. It's how we connect with other people. And we ignore that. We focus all about all on the ones and zeros. Like we're robots. Here's your, this is what you should eat, plug this in and do it.

It's not going to work that way. One quick note about strain training. And then I'd love to move on a diet since you brought up. So, you know, I think about like my mom and my dad. You know, my dad, they're like, my mom is about to turn 70 next year. My dad is like early 70, 73, I think. And they're really religious about walking. And they do a great job.

You know, I got them both Apple watches. We kind of like track and just a rough proxy. And I nudged my mom a little bit. My dad is like a pro at it. He loves to rack up the steps. He lives down in San Diego. He does a big morning walk in the morning, like loves to get up early and walks with his neighborhood friends.

So it's like community time. It's a group of other men, a couple of women. And they kind of go around this little loop. And he gets in probably before 6 a.m. 6.30, he's already at like, you know, 15,000 steps, right? And then he usually loves to just because he's a type of guy who likes to be out and about. He gets another like 10 to 15,000 steps on one or two other walks later. That's great. Like really dialed in, you know.

And I was chatting with my dad recently. I was like, dad, this is amazing, like for sure. And this is the community component too. Awesome. And maybe just twice a week. give me like 30, 40 minutes. We're going to have my brother-in-law, who's really into strength training and has been for a while.

He's a cardiologist, Dr. Neil Patel, lives in San Diego, and my parents live down there with him and my sister. And I was like, we're going to take the trainer that Neil got for my nephew, right? They're just doing very, like, basic stuff. My nephew's like 12 years old, you know, but they're getting the fundamentals of just like some training. And just 30 to 40 minutes, even if you don't have the time, and I know my dad does,

we can even just that day you don't do one of your third walk right just give me that like 30 to 40 minutes and doing a little bit of strength training let's see how that goes for like a month right how does that make you feel does that make you feel excited do you feel more energy like let's talk about it all and he said yes and so we're basically starting this month and my mom getting her to join along is a little bit of like you know I kind of have to get a little bit more excited about it but it just goes back to this idea that I think my parents, obviously all the walking is fantastic, right? It's a great source of movement in their life. And generally from their standpoint, they, being the age they are and just the media that they were exposed to, they thought like,

wow, we're nailing it. And they are, definitely. They're getting way more steps than most people. But they thought like that's kind of the epitome is like how much can we walk inside of a day, right? And if we can blow past the 10,000 steps, and get into the 20 and the 30,000, we're doing fantastic. But they kind of didn't hear the latest news, like a lot of us, including myself. I didn't get serious about this until a couple years ago,

that just a little bit of strength training could actually get them even more closer to some of their goals now at the age they're in. They want healthy longevity. They want to be healthy. They want to be still active and excited for grandkids in the future and be able to do all the different components and put the bag on the airline above their head

without needing help. And it's really been that. It's like, just give me a little bit of time. And that strength training will see how it goes. And I can imagine they're going to have the same experience I did is that you're just going to feel more activated in all aspects of your life. Yeah, 100%. There's a couple ways that they could approach it too. You could do it that way, which is how most people would do it. A couple days a week, learn how to do it. You know, exercise is a skill or movement, I should say, is a skill. Strength training is no different. So when you do strength training exercises, don't view them like,

this is going to work my legs, this is going to work my back, this is going to work my shoulders, so I have to feel those muscles. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but you're better off, if you look at the exercise like a skill and say,

I'm going to get better at squatting, or I'm going to get better at the skill of rowing, where I'm going to get better at the skill of overhead pressing, for example. Doing that is far better. You'll get more out of the exercises. You're more likely to do them

appropriately, you're less likely to ignore negative signs that your body may be telling you. Because a lot of people, they'll do that, right? They'll go do squats. And rather than be like, okay, this is a movement I need to perfect. It's like, well, can I make it, can I feel it in my legs and can I do this as many times as I can? So if you practice some like skills, you're going to be way better off. So working with a trainer, instructor is incredible when you first get started to learn the skills of these movements. So that's one way to do it.

Another way to do it. And there's, not only there's, is there nothing wrong with what? what I'm about to say, it's probably more effective. Well, I think it's more effective from a behavioral standpoint, but it may even be, and we have some data now that's showing this, it may be even be more effective just in terms of results. So instead of doing, let's say, two 45-minute workouts a week, what if they did 12 or 15 minutes of strength training every day? I mean, same total time. If you did the math, right? I don't know if I did the math there, right? But if you did the same total time divided over every day versus just two days a week, would you get the same results?

Yes, and I would argue probably even better. Let's talk about the behavioral aspect of that. First off, developing a habit, you're more likely to develop a consistent habit if it's something you can repeat on a regular basis. You're also more likely to develop a habit if it's something that is easily injected into your day. and you have a positive experience with it. It doesn't feel like it's too much. Taking 45 to 50 minutes out of your day twice a week doesn't sound like a lot, but for some people, it's like, okay, Wednesday we got this thing we got to go to and then we got this

other thing we got to go to on Friday versus, oh, here's my 13 minute routine that I do in the morning or in the middle of day or at night and I do it every single day type of deal. But here's why it may actually be more effective in terms of results. The practice element that I just mentioned. So instead of, let's say, doing, you did, you know, six or seven sets of, let's say, body weight squats between, let's say, Wednesday and Friday or Wednesday and Saturday, okay? What if I did, I don't know, a set or two every day? I'm going to learn that skill a little bit better. More at bats.

More at bats. And I'm going to learn it a little bit better. I don't have to deal so much with fatigue. Here's what's interesting about strength training. A lot of people don't realize. Fatigue is your enemy when it comes to building muscle and strength. That's not the case when you're trying to build endurance. If I'm trying to build endurance, especially competitive endurance,

well, I have to train and approach and train through fatigue. I have to train my body to learn how to be fatigued and to fatigue at later points. I have to get better at that. With strength training, I'm just trying to get stronger. Fatigue actually gets in the way. Too much fatigue will make your strength training turn into. to endurance training. So like, if I took five exercises with weights and I did them all with no rest,

like people like to do in a circuit, okay? That's not strength training. It's just cardio with weights, okay? Strength training requires rest periods and to not, not to get too deep into the weeds, but what we're trying to do is we're trying to work with the anaerobic energy system of the body, not the aerobic energy system of the body. The anaerobic energy system, you know, I'm burning ATP. This is the main source of energy for every cell, but it burns out very quickly and then I move into,

you know, glycolytic energy, right? Glycogen, okay? Nothing wrong with that, but if I'm trying to build strength, I want to train within, because strength is an anaerobic thing, okay? I want to train that anaerobic energy system. That's why if you watch strength athletes, they do a set and they rest for two or three minutes and then they do another set and then they rest, okay? When I divide my workouts over the week, and in this case we're using 10 to 15 minutes. Even advanced athletes can do this instead of doing three workouts, you know, two hours a day. They can do an hour a day, for example, or something like that. I'm not as fatigued. I'm more, I'm training within that anaerobic phase much more effectively. So now your dad, let's say, he wakes up and he

He does two sets of squats, maybe two sets of pushups, a set of planks, and he's done. He's done in 15 minutes. And let's say the next day he does, I don't know, a couple sets of lunges, maybe he does some overhead presses, maybe he does some band rows, and then he's done. And he does something like that every single day, right? Some exercise that is training, let's say the lower body, some pushing and some pulling, maybe some rotation or something to strengthen the core. He does that every single day.

He's going to get phenomenal results. He's going to feel like he's not even doing much at all. I'm like, I don't know. I feel so great. I'm only doing 15 minutes. This is so strange. But he's going to get great results from doing it. So that's the other approach that you can communicate to your parents.

Question for you, since I have you here. And I'm sure this will benefit a lot of people who are listening as well, not just people who also want to help their parents. You know, you get healthy and you're younger. One of the first things you're thinking about is that how do I support my parents too? not just because you want them to be healthy, but a healthier parent also means you less involved in their care. It's a selfish and selfless thing at the same time.

Like, I want my parents to be as healthy as possible, and they want to be as healthy as possible because we've been through taking care of grandparents who are very unhealthy and it's cumbersome. You know, it's a lot. Obviously, you still do it. You love them. You're there for them,

but you want them to be in the best shape that they possibly can be. So the instance of like my dad and mom, My dad was very active in sports. He used to play cricket and other things like that. My mom a little less active, minus like walking and things like that. At one point in time, there was like, I think they were called like, what were the gyms that were set up that were just for women and only women could go to them? Curves.

Curves. Yes. I think she was at one of those for a little while. Which didn't last. Didn't last. So for them, they feel very kind of intimidated in the feeling of like, I literally just don't even know what to do. Like, do they know what a plank is?

yes, are, is my dad worried about doing it wrong? No, but then he would be like, all right, what do I do next? Right? He's kind of feel, would feel confused about it. My mom would feel, oh, actually like, I don't know. I might have to modify it a little bit. I might have to do this. So would it be, in that instance, would you still recommend them starting and doing these activities on their own or should they still start with a trainer? But work with that trainer and tell them, hey, and we have a great trainer, you know, that that's working with my family down there, hey, we really want to find something that we can teach my parents to do that is this, you know, routine that takes 15 minutes, but it could be every single day. So help them sort of learn

these activities and do it the right and help them correct their form, but then they're doing it on their own when on the days that you're not there. Is that how you'd approach you? Absolutely. Hiring a coach, a good coach or a good trainer is extremely invaluable. The money that you invest with them. If they do a good job, will last you and pay dividends for the rest of your life. So a good coach and trainer. What they'll do is they'll try to look at your movement patterns.

They'll try to get your body to move in a way that's a little bit more optimal. So your risk of injury is much lower. A lot of us develop movement patterns that are not so great, especially if we sit a lot or we do certain movements repetitively. So you take somebody, for example,

who's inactive and you have them try to a squat, and they're not going to squat in a way. They're not going to have the skill of squatting down very well. And so if they do that over and over, risk of injury goes through the roof, and the exercise isn't nearly as beneficial. So a good coach or trainer will look at that person and say, okay, you have, let's say, forward shoulder or forward head or a really strong anterior pelvic tilt or I notice this asymmetrical shift that's happening. Let's identify these things. Let's strengthen your body so it can move in a little more balanced way. And let me teach you what it feels like to do these basic movements

so you understand the skill of it and you can practice the skill of it. That's what you'll get from a good coach or trainer. Now, thankfully today, we have YouTube, you know, you can watch videos, you can practice them. If you approach the exercises, like I said, like they're skills that you're trying to learn, you're going to be far better off at getting to the point

where you can do them well than you would as if you looked at them like workouts. Like, you know, I love telling this story because this was like, there's so many times I had epiphanies as a trainer. This one was a big one for me. I was hiking in the foothills in Northern California by where I live. And as I was hiking, the runners would pass me up. And as a trainer, it's really hard not to notice biomechanics. It's just something you do.

So you see someone running and you can see, oh man, that person's feet are pronating really bad. Or, wow, that's a really strong anterior pelvic tilt. They're going to be hurting later. And I remember everybody that walked by It was just I would notice these things And then somebody ran by that just They looked like a gazelle They were just floating as they ran by

Like man that that looks amazing And I remember thinking like holy cow Humans were not very good at almost anything physically When you compare us to other animals Except for one thing We can out track or outrun for distance Almost any other animal A lot of people don't know this

Humans fit humans are excellent at just running for distance. In fact, this is how Hunter gathers hunt. They'll throw something at an animal wound it and then they'll just run after it until it gets tired. And I thought, but yet here we are trying to run and nobody could do it right. Everybody's running terribly.

It's a number one cause of injury when it comes to exercise. And then it dawned on me. It's because it's a skill that we've all forgotten. We all run when we're kids and then we stop. And your body loses these skills. It's not just the muscle you lose. Your brain prunes neurons and neural connections for skills that it deems no longer necessary. So when people lace up the running shoes, nobody thinks to themselves like, okay, I'm going to put my shoes on and I'm going to go learn the skill of running again.

They just go run until they're tired. And what happens when you do that is you have a bad movement pattern because you lost the skill of running. And then you strengthen that poor movement pattern by doing it really hard until you get really tired. And so you end up developing and strengthening this really terrible movement pattern. People do this with strength training as well. They'll watch a video on YouTube and they'll say, oh, pushups. That's for the shoulders, the chest, and the triceps. And yeah, I really want to work on the back of my arms.

Then they'll get on the floor, having not done a pushup for, I don't know, 10 years or ever. And they'll do them until they're super tired. Okay. Terrible technique formed. The skill isn't there. They feel the muscle. They think they're doing a great job. But what they're doing is are strengthening a terrible movement pattern.

they're making the exercise not safe and not effective. Instead, what you should do is view exercises like you're watching someone swing a club, you know, playing golf. Like nobody goes out and says, I want to get better at golf and just swings as hard as as they can as fast they can until I get tired, right? That would not make you a good golfer. They go slow and they practice each step and how do I do this right and let me get good at this.

View these exercises the same way. Okay, that's what a squat looks like. Let me try it. Well, if I go down any further than this, looks like my knees start to cave in, my heels come up, I feel it in my back, so I'm not going to go down that far.

I'm going to practice the part that I can do well, and then I'm going to test myself again next time to see if I could do it a little deeper and do it right. And then over time, you develop the skill. But guess what else is happening over time? You're getting stronger. You're building more muscle.

You're getting the benefits. You're not getting the potential negatives or the risks of injury. So that's how I would communicate it to the average person or to your parents. I'd say, try these exercises, try to perfect the skill of them, and don't worry about working out. You know what I want you to do, Mom? I want you to every day practice sitting down and standing up out of a chair really slow and controlled. That's a squat.

That might be a great way to start. So, Mom, when you sit down, don't let your knees cave in and don't just plop down on the floor. See if you could lower yourself real slow and gently touch the seat and then sit down and then stand out. And do that until you notice your form is kind of off. And maybe that's five reps, maybe that's 10 reps. Who knows? Practice that and say, okay, now we're going to try a push-up. I don't think you're going to be able to do this on the floor.

That's kind of a high-level version of a push-up. Try it over here on the desk or the table. Go down real slow and controlled until you feel like it's not controlled anymore. And then come back up and practice that. When you get better, try to get a little lower. And then when you can do that perfectly, go on a lower table or a chair. and then eventually onto the floor. And if you do it that way, well, now you're training yourself.

Now you're doing it the right way. That's great. I love that. I'm always chatting with different folks who talk about the benefit of strain training, but literally there are people who are listening today that are like, I am just starting with the basics. And that breakdown that you had was a great explanation of how to start with the basics. Yeah.

And you know what the beauty of this is? Those basic movements, squatting, and there's many versions of squats. Okay, so people can think like the, you know, power lifting or bodybuilding squat with a barbell. That's a squat. So standing and squating. So it's sitting down, standing up. That would be a squat. So it's sitting down, standing up on something that's high if it's really hard for you.

That would be a squat. Pressing. That's another fundamental movement. So pressing your body this way or something away from you or up above your head. That's another form of pressing. That's another important fundamental movement. Pulling. Pulling is an important movement.

So that could be pulling towards my body. in this direction or from up high and down. So that's an important type of movement. Some type of rotating is also really important. Being able to twist your torso and your body, that's really important. And then if we want to throw a fifth thing in there, some kind of a split stance type of a movement.

So it could be my right foot's in front, my left foot in front, and I bring my knee down a little bit and stand up. And eventually I could become a lunge, right? those five basic movements, by the way, there's like a hundred different varieties and versions off those. But even the ones I just said, those five right there, if you talk to the advanced strength athlete, okay, I'm not even talking about a beginner.

You talk to somebody's been doing this for years who's like really into it and does it five days a week and is like beyond, they're just, they're at performance now. They're beyond health and longevity. Like, I want to see how strong I can get and all that stuff. And ask them, what are the most effective, what are the exercises that give you the most bang for your buck. We're the ones that really make you strong and give you great results. And I promise you it's going to be those five.

It's going to be all. It's going to be one of those five right there or all those five that they're going to list. So they're not just movements for beginners. They're movements for everybody. There's just ways you do them when you get started and then there's a way to progress them as you get better. But to say, I squat. I squat. Just like I told you, you can have your mom sit down and stand up.

I do squats all the time. Mine look different. I have a barbell on my back and, you know, I'm doing a lot more weight, but it's the same thing. I love it. You were chatting a little bit about diet. And at the beginning of that episode, you talked about a few dietary principles, one of them being this idea of prioritizing protein, having 30 grams of protein at every meal and what that does. Give us a little bit of a recap on that.

And then take us through a few other dietary principles, dues or don'ts. And it doesn't even have to be about specific foods or macros. It's just your worldview that you think of. You mentioned another one that I'll just highlight for the audience. I don't think we have to recap this one. You really explained it well. This idea that you focus more on adding in, which obviously that goes right into the protein conversation as well versus removing.

You're not going to immediately focus on like, let's take this away from people. Let's focus on adding. And when you combine that with the strength training, you know, you're already starting to see this momentum that people are making. You know, the clients you've worked with before, the people that listen to you and your podcasts that are implementing this. And so they already start to develop, you know, some momentum that gets them excited. So, so let's talk about the diet side. Remind us again about the protein and then walk us through any other dietary principles that are part of your world. Yeah. So if you look at studies,

so we'll start at the top here, okay, like big picture. If you look at studies where they take obese individuals and have them see a dietitian or a nutritionist or someone who gives them a diet, And you compare them to obese individuals who see a therapist. Okay. The people who see a therapist have a better success rate than the people who go and see a dietitian or nutritionist. Wow. Okay.

What does that tell us? That tells us that we're focusing far too much on the ones and zeros, like I said before, the program, you know, eat this, eat this, don't eat that. And less on the why. Why am I doing this? Why am I driven this way? Why am I reaching for these things? Why is it so hard for me?

Okay. And that's the thing that we need to start with. So let's start big picture first, but then I'll kind of zero in because it gets a little esoteric at first. So first off, we all have a relationship with food. And our relationship has been developed through society, how we grew up, how we connect to food during different, you know, times, whether we're stress. or angry or sad or happy or whatever.

Some foods mean certain things to us. Other foods meet other things to us. Here's a silly example. That's funny, right? If I were to label, if I were to tell you to list five breakfast foods and five dinner foods, I bet, you know, you took 100 people, they would be very similar, right? How did that happen? Why are eggs and bacon a breakfast food or why is cereal a breakfast food, right?

Why is like steak and potato a dinner food? Well, because we develop that relationship. and largely through marketing that told us that some foods are something and other foods or other things, right? If I say popcorn, when do you eat popcorn? That's when I go to the movies, right? So this is something that we need to become a bit aware of. Most of us have developed a relationship with food that revolves around palatibility.

Pallitability is the top thing that we use to develop our relationship with food. is how palatable something is. In fact, most people watching this right now have probably never even felt what it feels like to be hungry. I know people are like, what are talking about? I get hungry every day at noon or whatever. Not really. Hunger doesn't set in until about 48 hours of fasting.

That's when you start to feel. Anybody who's who ever fasted for, who's done like a spiritual fast, where they go for 48 or 72 hours will tell you, oh, it feels very different to feel hungry. So we don't know what that feels like. We know what it feels like to eat things that taste good, make us feel good. And that's kind of about it.

Most of us don't even know that certain foods make us feel other ways. Like I used to get clients who would tell me that they would take antacids every day at noon because they just, oh, I just get heartburn. It's just something that I have. And then eventually we realize, like, well, it's the bagel that you eat every morning. They never connected the two. They had no idea that it was that that caused that. Okay.

So our relationship to food is extremely important. And I'll start with this, because that's a complex one, but I'll start with this. Are you trying to eat healthier or better because you hate yourself? Or are you doing it because you love yourself? Okay. Most of us do it because we hate ourselves. I hate the way I look. I hate the way I feel.

I'm inadequate. I'm lazy. Whatever. So I'm going to change how I eat. If you go into changing your diet from that standpoint, food. food becomes restrictive. Food becomes a reward. It becomes a punishment.

It's not enjoyable to eat, quote, unquote, unhealthy. It's tyrannical. It's what I do to me because I hate me and I'm bad and I'm, don't have discipline or whatever. And so this is how I'm going to eat now. So here's a clue to that, by the way. If somebody's on a diet and you offer them, let's say a food that's not on their diet, Like, hey, you want a cookie? They'll respond with, no, I can't.

No, no, I can't. I'm on a diet right now. Or no, I can't. Like, what do you mean you can? Of course you can. You don't want to or you want to. It's very different, right? Now let's define what I said about love, self-love.

It's not a feeling. I say that because people are like, what do you mean love myself? I don't always love my. Of course you don't. But it's an action. If you think of it as an action, that's really what love is, right? Like, I have kids. I don't always like my kids, but I always love them.

I try to do what's best for them. So think in terms of eating healthy from the standpoint of you're trying to care for yourself. Start there. It's very important because then eating healthy doesn't feel restrictive. It doesn't feel like a punishment. It feels like self-care. That's so important. Okay, I can't stress this enough.

If you don't start from that standpoint, this is always going to feel tyrannical. This is always going to feel like you're white knuckling it. And at some point, you will rebel. And rebellion against tyranny is. looks like this, binging or going way off. People don't go off their diet by eating a slice of pizza. Nobody goes off their diet by eating one slice of pizza. Everybody goes off their diet by eating so much pizza, they're uncomfortable and they're sick

on the couch. Like what just happened, right? So start with the standpoint of, okay, I want to care for myself. I want to eat in a way that cares for me. So let's start there first. And just to pause you there, if somebody's listening and is like, you know what? I want that. and I also know I'm not there and I need that,

then is that where you're saying, hey, maybe we find a therapist first. Let's find some support around you to help you get there. If you genuinely feel that you're stuck and you can't get there alone, like you're so spiraling downward or you just have so much self-loathing or maybe you're stuck in depression

and you don't know how to get out, is that where you would say, okay, let's find a therapist to help you so that you can actually at least start to step into some elements of self-love. Yeah, the greatest success I had with clients were when it was me and they had a therapist at the same time. The success right went through the roof

when both, they had both of us working with them. The physical and the mental. It was just, it was like, oh, this person is going to. I mean, we've done so many episodes about tackling depression through movement, through improving blood sugar, through metabolic health, et cetera. So I 100% believe. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

But, you know, let's say, okay, I don't want to go that route. Just start with what I'm saying. Okay, I want to care for myself. Now, I do want to be clear, palatibility in the enjoyment of eating is also a value. So I'm not saying it's not a value, okay? I'm just saying it's not the only value. So what's happening is we're basing our decisions off of one value, one true understanding.

It's like picking a partner to marry based off of looks and looks alone. Could you imagine the disaster? I know. A lot of people have that disaster, right? Where it's just looks. You don't care about anything else. It's just about how attractive they are, right? That's obviously going to cause a problem. So palatibility, yes, there's value there.

But there's other values that we haven't learned to either develop or even acknowledge that we need to pay attention to. Okay? So how does this food make me feel energy-wise? When do I reach for this food? How does it affect my digestion? my skin. By the way, you're going to have to pay attention to these things at first before they start to become automatic because most of us are not even aware that these foods affect this in

particular ways. How does it affect my sleep? How do I feel while I eat it? So start paying attention to those types of things as well. And then let's do this. Let's look at food and let's realize that one of the biggest challenges we have with eating properly is it's really hard not to overeat. It's just really hard not to overate.

Okay, now I'm going to add something to that. When we eat foods that are designed and engineered to make us overeat, it's actually not normal or should I say not typical or common to overeat when you eat foods that are not designed to do that. A lot of people don't realize that. There's this myth that humans are eating machines. If you just put food in front of us, we'll eat until we're all obese and sick. That's not true.

We have natural systems of satiety that we evolved with that tell us when it's time to stop eating. Overeating 5,000 years ago had its own risk. Now, it's probably not obesity because it's probably real hard to be obese. But if you overate to the point of gastric distress or issues, that meant death. So we have natural systems of satiety that we've hijacked because food scientists have done an incredible job at designing foods that overcome that. And we have studies now. Some of the best studies in nutrition that exist are some of the studies I'm about to talk about in terms of how foods affect these systems of satiety. So they have got studies now where, and I say these are

some of the best studies because the studies on nutrition, a lot of them can be quite cloudy because they require self-reporting and they're not controlled well. And gosh, you tell somebody, you know, how many tomatoes did you eat over the last month? It's like, okay, I don't know, five or whatever. But if you could put people in a lab and watch them and count what they're eating, now we're getting a better, more accurate picture. Well, they've done studies where they take groups of people, they put them in a lab, and this group over here has unlimited access to heavily processed foods. These are engineered foods, okay? Heavily processed foods. And then this group over here has unlimited access to whole natural foods, foods that, you know, or maybe one

ingredient, apples, bananas, nuts, meat, that kind of stuff, eggs, right? So, heavily processed foods, whole natural foods. Then they watch them. By the way, they also, for people who are like, oh, it's the macros, no, no, no, they also have similar macro breakdowns. They actually did a pretty good job with this. It wasn't like they all had all sugar over here. Sure. It was a pretty similar the breakdown. They watched them and observed. Then they took those groups, and I love this, they switched rooms. Okay. So who knows? Maybe this group over here just eats more on this one. No, no, they switch rooms. And they've done several studies like this. Here's what they found. On average, people eating heavily processed foods will eat daily 600 more calories a day.

On average, that's a lot. That's like two and a half hours of running for the average person on a treadmill to burn 600 calories. Okay. Why is that? Heavily processed foods, they're not inherently unhealthy, although most of them are. They're not inherently evil or anything like that.

It's just the vast majority of research and development that went into those foods, the vast majority of money and production that went into those foods went into making them hyper palatable. Okay? If you ever talk to a food scientist, they'll explain this to you. Like, they've got it down to the point.

Like, they know the right combination of salty, sweet, texture, sound that makes when you crunch on it, residue that it leaves on your fingers, the sound the bag makes when you open it, the color on the bag, like, all of that that'll make you eat more than you would if it had, let's say, a different combination. I had Chris Cressor on the show years ago. He's a phenomenal example. He said, if I gave you five plain boiled potatoes, plain. And I told you eat them all.

And in 30 minutes, would you be able to? I was like, oh, I don't know. I'd probably gag. And he says, well, if they gave you a family-sized bag of potato chips, would you be able to do it? And I said, yeah. They go, same amount of potatoes. Wow.

That's how palatable potato chips are in comparison to the potato. So why am I saying this? if you're going to try and do what I'm saying, it's going to be really hard if you're eating foods that have been engineered and billions of dollars over decades have been spent on making you overeat them. Good luck. So would you also put into that category, not as bad, but they're, you know, if you go to like whole foods, still one of the top sellers is like potato chips. They might be fried in avocado oil, but there's still potato chips at the end of the day. So there's even still a lot of quote unquote health food that has sort of picked up.

And now a lot of these health companies are being sold to bigger companies and they're getting, you know, all the same things. And also people are just inherently, they know that, wow, if you add a little bit more tapioca syrup to these gummies, even though if they have vitamin D in them, just people are going to keep on eating them because they're like super sweet and they're fun to eat. So also in this category, not to just throw like the big food under the bus is a lot of sort of, you know, heavily processed, quote unquote health food. You hit the nail on the head.

Okay, look, markets, right, we live in a market-based society, and there's wonderful benefits to living in a market-based society. But markets do something exceptionally well. They give us what we want. They don't give us what we need. They give us what we want, okay? The top-selling health foods, the top-selling protein bars are not the ones that are the healthiest.

They're the ones that taste the best. Okay? That's it. fact. If you, and I know this is my space, I'm in the fitness space. If I want to make a protein powder or a protein bar or a healthy snack, the way that I'm going to sell the most of that product is by making it taste the best, okay? By making it the most palatable.

Okay, so you hit the nail on the head. Heavily processed foods are designed to make you overeat. Okay, period. End of story. If they comprise a majority of your diet, good luck. trying to eat the appropriate amount. This is how powerful it is. One of my favorite things to do with clients.

I love doing this. And I challenge anybody watching this to try this right now. I would do this right here. I'd say, I don't want you to eat any less. Here's what I want you to do. Don't eat heavily processed foods. Just eat whole natural foods. Eat as much as you want.

Let's just start there. And everybody would look at me like, what do you mean as much as I want? I don't care. Eat as much steak, rice, potatoes, fish, eggs, fruit, eat as much as you want. All of it.

Eat as much as you want. And let's just start there. And then we would track their progress or whatever. And, you know, within a couple months, I'd be like, wow, you lost seven pounds of body fat. And they'd look at me like I was crazy. Wow. Oh, my God.

I'm like full. I'm like eating until I'm full every single day. And they'd think that there was some weird chemical in the heavily processed food that would make him gain body fat and all that stuff. And I'd say, no, you're eating less calories. And then I'd have them track. and then sure enough, they were eating, you know, five, six, seven hundred less calories a day because they were eating foods that your body is aligned with.

When you eat whole natural foods, your satiety will kick in when it's supposed to, unlike heavily processed foods that it's like a lag. Okay? So that's one thing right there. Protein is another one. Protein is very, very satiety inducing. if you eat your body weight in grams of protein, and for people who are overweight,

use your target body weight. You know, I weigh about 210 pounds. Eating 210 pounds grams, excuse me, 210 grams of protein per day from whole natural foods is hard. I know, I do this every single day. It really, it's like, oh my God, I am like full and I'm at 160 grams of protein.

Like, this is really tough. If you're 110 pound female, 150 pound female, 170 pound male, try it. Try doing it for five days in a row. Prioritize it because it's going to be hard otherwise. And watch what happens. It is satiety inducing like another. We have all the data and studies to support this. Do this from whole natural foods, not protein powders.

Protein powders are a hack that kind of make it easier. Okay. Great for people who are, you know, bodybuilders, but the average person, I'd say only use protein powders. Even like a grass-fed way, you know, that doesn't have a lot of fillers and stuff inside of it. Here's how you should use protein powders. If you don't hit your protein target at the end of the day, go in and throw in a protein powder. So it's a supplemental, but it shouldn't be the base. No, because one of the benefits of protein is it produces satiety. Drinking a 30-gram protein shake from way isn't going to produce satiety like eating 30 grams of protein from

chicken. It just doesn't. Even if you take out the other, the fat or whatever from the chicken, it just doesn't. So avoid heavily processed foods. Eat your body weight in grams of protein or aim for that and prioritize that. Okay, that's the other one. Also eat, you know, well-cooked vegetables. That's another thing. But really everything else is splitting hairs or small potatoes, I should say, in comparison

to what I just said. Literally, literally, the average client will lose 10 to 15 pounds just by avoiding heavily processed foods and eating as much whole foods as they want. It was like clockwork. I would get them lose 10 pounds and they feel like they were eating so much food. They were so stuffed. And I loved it because it made me look like a wizard like I was some like magical trainer. Then I'll break it down and explain to them.

Another one is to drink a lot of water. It's funny. In the hardcore muscle building space, there's a lot of what they would call bro science. Okay. You make fun of it online. Oh, that's bro science. Some of it is rooted in some truth. They just didn't know how to explain it.

The way they would explain it was bro science. But the results were real. It still worked. It's just like the explanation may not be accurate. Yeah. So here's a good one. Drink a half a gallon to a gallon of water every day. You'll notice some weight loss effects from doing that.

Okay, what's happening? Is the water flushing fat out of my body? No, it's not doing any of that. You drink that much water. You're not drinking anything else. That's the bottom line. You just end up drinking just water. And water itself kind of makes you feel full sometimes.

Kind of helps you feel full. slightly being dehydrated or not optimizing your water intake tends to make you want to eat more. When I would get clients to do that as well, we would also notice some weight loss from doing that. So these are just small things I like to say because they're effective in their sustainability. And I love things that make people feel like they're not doing a lot. Like, okay, I'm just doing this, but what the heck is going on versus when people follow diets? It's like this really hard thing. I got to try and do every single day.

I mean, those things right there that I just listed make a huge impact. Oh, here's one other thing. You want to cut your calories by 10 to 15% every day? This is really easy. Okay. When you eat, don't eat and watch TV, be on your phone, be on a computer, or do anything else. I've heard you talk about this. Explain it.

Oh, studies are great on this. When we eat while distracted, we eat 10 to 15% more calories. And everybody's, everybody's eating. eating and watching TV right now, looking at their phone, whatever. Nowadays, everybody's distracted, right? If you just did that, you can count on your calories dropping enough to see weight loss. So literally, when you eat, sit down, nothing else around me and just eat. So a question on that, just to like clarify.

So, you know, people eat with other people. Is that a form of distraction? Like, hey, you and I are enjoying lunch together and we're having a conversation while we're eating. Is that a distraction? Yeah. Okay, so I don't put that in the same category because the health benefits. You're not like completely tuning out. You're still in it.

You're present. You're not like checked out watching this thriller or whatever. 100%. You're still aware. But also, we do not want, I never want to negate the health benefits of connecting with other people. I mean, tremendous health benefits with doing that. So yeah, you sit down and you eat with someone. By the way, you're going to watch people eat together nowadays.

They don't eat together. they eat at the same time, but they're on their phones or doing what I said earlier. But if you're just like doing what we're doing right now and we're eating, far less likely to overate. Plus we get to connect. And we have, yeah, we have a good time. Which is another nutrient. 100%.

100%. I mean, that's kind of it right there. You know, focus on chewing your food really well. Sounds so stupid, but studies will show that'll drop your calories 10%. Like these are, these are ways to alter your behavior. Your behavior is what drives what you do. You don't alter your behavior by telling yourself to do these things. Then you're fighting these natural behaviors.

It's like, okay, I got to cut my calories by 600, but I'm going to eat heavily processed foods. Whoa, that's going to be a struggle. What if I cut those foods out, ate as much as I wanted? What happens? I eat 600 less calories a day. So this is the way I would communicate it. It's like going uphill versus downhill. Totally.

Are you pushing uphill and you're pushing a boulder versus, is, you know, are you going downhill with the natural momentum and the way that your behaviors are going, still take some behavioral change. But again, it goes back to the beginning of the conversation. This is going to be much more sustainable. And you're more likely to hit that initial goal faster in the first place as well. Absolutely. You're also going to do this over time. You start to change, you start to develop a new relationship with food. I can't stress this enough. I can't stress this enough. If you truly enjoy eating healthy, are you ever going to struggle with it? You know, people who aren't in the space that we're in, like, we love it. We love what

we do. That's why we do this, right? They don't relate to us when we say things like, oh, I love eating healthy. Oh, it's so great. Like, I love eating. Like, they look at us like, what are you talking about? Like, that salad and that bowl of vegetables and whatever, that's not as good as a pizza. Like, what are you talking about. Like, first off, you and I know how tasty a pizza is. I'm not an idiot. Okay. But that's not all the enjoyment that I get from food. I've developed a relationship with food now where I can enjoy pizza sometimes, but most of the time I enjoy the other things I've become aware of around food. And that makes me want to eat those foods more. That makes me want to eat those foods even more than the slice of pizza, for example, because I know what comes along with that pizza.

I'm aware of it. Oh, my digestion is going to be off. It would be sluggish. I'm not going to feel as sharp. Is it worth it? Occasionally it's worth it because I'm with my friends and we're hanging out. But most of the time, it's kind of not. So you become more aware over time and you start to develop this relationship where you're

like, wow, I really, you know, I kind of crave, you know, this healthy thing. And I enjoy eating it. And then someone offers you a cookie and you say, yeah, I kind of don't want that cookie. Like, how great would that be? Yeah. I kind of don't want that. Again, it doesn't mean you all of a sudden find the cookie to, taste gross, you know it tastes good, you just don't want it like you did before because you

have a broader, wider understanding of all of the values of food. And this 100% can happen. For people who are watching this right now who are saying, that sounds crazy, look, food companies, food manufacturers know this. This is why marketing exists. Beer commercials. They never show somebody with a hand. It's always at the beach and you're having a great time and you've got the girls in the car and it looks great, right?

They create these relationships for you because that goes into your decision-making process. There is a learning process that goes along with this. And most of us when it comes to food in particular are in the first stage, which is we're just unconsciously incompetent. We just don't know what we don't know. Now, you're watching this and you're listening and let's say you start applying. some of the stuff, well, you're going to move into the second stage, which can be intimidating at first, which is you become consciously incompetent. This is where people sometimes get

overwhelmed. Like, oh my gosh, all this stuff I don't know. Like, you're now aware of what you don't know. But stay the course. Give yourself, start with what is realistic for you, because it does build off of that. Don't go beyond what's realistic. That's a big mistake. And then you move to the third phase, which is conscious competence. That just means you have to think about what you're doing. You have to think about what you put in your mouth and oh yeah, how does that make me feel? And oh yeah, I should eat this. And, you know, I noticed my performance drop in the gym. And these are the foods that make me feel better with performance. And this makes me not sleep as good. So I think I'm not going to eat this tonight. But then when you do that over time, you move into the

final stage, which is where you want to be, which you can get to, which is you become unconsciously competent, just how you live, how you eat. And people ask you, how do you do it? And it seems so easy. and it's so possible. I want people to know that right now. It is so possible. You do not have to become a fitness fanatic to get there. It's a place everybody can get. It's just we've never practiced it.

We don't know how to practice it. My space communicates it terribly. You know, the fitness space, the health space communicates it terribly. They're trying to promise you the quick fix. They're trying to prey on your insecurities. They're telling you take this pill or follow this crazy doctor. or do this thing and then 30 days and all that stuff. No, no, no.

It's possible. It takes a little bit of time. But if you do it the way that I'm explaining it, you'll get there. And then it's going to be the point where it's just the way you live. You've had, you know, different zigs and zags in your journey because you've been in this space for a while. You know, you got into the whole fitness world because you felt like you were a skinny kid and you wanted to put on weight and muscle and other things.

And you had other zigs and zags. But when did it fundamentally change for you to? to have this positive relationship with food, which also related to this positive relationship with yourself, that you didn't hate yourself. Not that you were perfect all the time. We all have moments, but that you weren't leading primarily

because you had a negative view of yourself, but that you were going downhill, you were moving forward, you had momentum in your life because you loved yourself. You had a positive relationship. When did things change? Yeah, so I want to first communicate this so I don't come across like I'm preaching from some some high place. This is the human

condition. Okay. So I still, everybody will struggle forever. This is always going to happen. This is always something you're going to work on. It's a journey. There is no destination to get to and then you and then you're done. You know yourself better than anybody, which means you know all your imperfections and the negative attributes that you have and what you could have done better. So this is always going to be something that you're going to have to visit and work on. So I want to be very clear with that. And I still do. Okay. But it definitely gets better over time. You become more aware over time. And two things. For me, first off, thankfully, I feel very blessed that I always really cared truly about the clients that I trained. And now, why am I saying that? That drove me to be a

great trainer for them way before I was a great trainer for myself. Because it was so much easier to care about these people than it was to really view myself in that way. But through that process, it became really hard not to be like, why don't I apply that to myself? And I'm saying this to them, but why do I feel this way about myself? But I really, really cared about my client. So that always drove me. I always wanted to do better. I always want to find ways to figure out ways to get this to become something they do forever and develop this relationship with it and to the point where they didn't do this up and down and they felt good about it and they continued to enjoy this journey and stay on it for the rest of their lives.

So that really helped me. But I had my own health scare or my own, you know, there was a period there where I had to face the music and I was forced to look at myself and say, what the heck am I doing to myself? This was in my early 30s. So remember I'd been personally, you know, working out on all this since I was 14. And you said it earlier, it all started from being very insecure about my body. I think a lot of people start exercising from that standpoint. A very skinny kid and felt inadequate, wanted to build muscle.

And so I pursued it from that standpoint, which led me to do a lot of unhealthy things to my body, overtrain, you know, take supplements in ways that weren't healthy. even at one point used designer steroids, which, you know, there was a period there where you can get them over the counter. And I did all that, all these things that were not healthy in the pursuit of, you know, kind of trying to solve this insecurity, which anybody who knows who's ever dealt with an insecurity knows that there's no solving it. It's like a bottomless pit, right? But I did these things for myself. Meanwhile, I'm carrying about my clients, learning these things and becoming a great trainer. Well, anyway, in my early 30s, my body rebelled in a very big way.

I developed digestive issues that I couldn't figure out. Lost a lot of weight, lost something like 13 pounds of lean body mass. I felt terrible. All the healthy things that I thought were healthy were no longer working for me, losing strength in the gym. That's it in my ego, right? I developed a shell of muscle because of this insecurity. And went to the doctor and they couldn't figure out what was going on.

They were going to test me for Crohn's disease. scary, really scary time because I had developed this kind of persona and this business around it. Like, who am I if my health goes south? Thankfully, I was surrounded by really, really good health practitioners. At the time, I had a wellness studio. And in my wellness studio, you know, we had trainers like myself. But then I had people who did hormone and gut testing. I had people who did mindfulness type exercise. I had physical therapists in there. So these were really, really smart people in their own spaces.

And I had worked with them and appreciated them and valued what they did because I could see the benefit they brought clients, especially when clients worked with all of us. I could see like these people are just thriving, working with these people. But, you know, for me, not for me. I'm just going to lift weights and eat a lot of protein, take supplements and that kind of stuff. Well, here I am withering away. I feel like, you know, absolute crap. And I sat down with them and I said, look, I'm desperate.

I don't know what the hell is going on. I will do whatever you tell me. I will do whatever you tell me. I am done trying to figure this out myself. And, you know, I'm scared. So what should I do? And I did some gut testing, food sensitivity testing. I drastically reduced the intensity and free.

frequency of my workouts. I focused on sleep. I cut all these other foods out of my diet. I started looking at, you know, my dysbiosis I had in my gut. So I started working on things to treat things like SIBO. I stopped weighing myself. I stopped looking in the mirror. Those were all very triggering for me because I was just like, I just need to fix this. I just need to fix this. And I need my health. Without my health, like, it doesn't matter. And I did this for about a year. It was a slow process. And my body did slowly and then eventually heal through that process. And I did a really good job of not paying attention to my reflection.

It was a big trigger. Like if I looked in the mirror, I knew that it would push me to do the things that I had done before. So I just completely avoided looking at mirrors. Well, there was this moment where I was at a friend's house and it was a pool party and we were all swimming and having a good time. and I went to use the restroom and there were like two mirrors in the bathroom. So one would reflect off the other one. And I caught a glimpse of myself from an angle that I'm not used to. So for a split second, I was able to objectively view my reflection.

Split second. I don't know if you've ever done that where you see yourself. Okay. So you don't have that subjective filter, right? And I looked at myself, object, just for a split second. and then I had this crazy like, I don't know, it was this really, really weird experience. And then I looked in the mirror and I realized I looked better than I'd looked before, ever before. I thought, oh my God, this whole time, I was chasing this ideal, this aesthetic ideal.

And through the process of just trying to be healthy, I actually got a lot further than I ever did before. And yeah, that's what it dawned on me. Like chasing health was going to give me a great deal of aesthetics. Chasing aesthetics, I would eventually lose my health and then lose my aesthetics. And so it really did change how I communicate health and fitness. And actually, it helped shape and form the voice that I have now on my show and how I communicate things. But that was my personal experience. And, you know, I'd be lying if I said it's not always a story.

struggle. You're always, you know, life is always going to challenge you in ways where, you know, it's easy to hate yourself. You know, I'm a father. I'm a husband. I have a business. And, but I'm aware, much more aware than I ever was before on whether or not I'm doing things from a place of hate or care. And I can, I think I can at least stop myself before it gets too bad and move in the right direction. Yeah. Catching it, noticing it early. We all have it. Totally. And then also having that forgiveness that even if it's the thousand time today that you've done that, hey, you were doing the best that you could. You give yourself a little bit of forgiveness, a little bit of understanding. You might realize like, oh, you know what? I didn't sleep that well last night.

And that led me to being meaner of myself today. Or some people see led to me overeating or this. And you have a little bit more compassion. And then you're less likely to give as much energy to that loop. Yes. And it takes some humility, but it may makes the journey enjoyable. Okay, so if you enjoy the journey of growth, if you enjoy the journey of learning how to get your body to move better, if you enjoy the journey and the process of, let's say, getting stronger of finding healthy foods even more enjoyable

or seeing what foods can do for you and discovering new foods and how they affect your body. And then maybe you go through a period where other foods are working better for you and how sleep affects your body. And then your relationships. I mean, this is a big one with the people around you. Like, this is all the journey of health, by the way. If you learn to enjoy the journey, you're going to go a lot further than if you just focus

on the destination. The destination is, that's a myth. There is no destination. There's, I'm sure there's, I mean, I know there's, there's goalposts, but really it's about the journey. And so if you view it in this way and you go to the gym or you approach exercise this way, you approach your nutrition this way, it feels like a slower process because you're not throwing everything but the kitchen seek at yourself all at once. But I promise you it's a faster way and it's for sure the only permanent way. It's the only sustainable way

to approach this unless you're the one in a billion people who has the weird epiphany, but that almost never happens. It almost, people are always waiting for that epiphany. It doesn't happen. And then motivation. Motivation is going to come and go. And I want people to understand that. You are going to feel very motivated sometimes and sometimes you're not.

What I'm describing is how you are able to continue doing this during those periods of low motivation that inevitably happen. Okay. Also, those periods of motivation, and pop up more frequently when you do this in the way, when you do this in the way that I'm describing. So if you love motivated, you love feeling motivated, do it this way and you'll get that feeling more often.

It's not always going to be with you though. But this is how you keep going. Powerful reminder. As we're winding down here, just give us a little bit of the lay of the land. Like you mentioned your businesses. Yeah. You have a podcast.

Our audience may not be familiar with all that. So just share a little bit about that. Yeah. So I have a podcast with two other co-hosts and then a producer. called Mind Pump. And what you hear on the show are three trainers who worked with everyday people for over two decades. And so we communicate health, fitness, nutrition, supplements from that viewpoint. We mix entertainment in there as well because we learned as trainers that if it's not entertaining,

you're not going to show up. You guys are funny. We have a great time. We really have a good time. We have a good report. Very good, great chemistry between us. We have a lot of fun. And we communicate it in an understandable way in ways that you can apply.

So that's the show. We do five episodes a week. It's a lot of fun. I wrote a book called The Resistance Training Revolution that communicates strength training and how to apply it and why it's a form of exercise you should engage in and what workouts should look like for you if you're just getting started. And that's pretty much it. We also have workout programs that you could follow that we talk about on the show.

Everything from complete beginners to advanced. strength athletes or endurance athletes. And I think now we're up to maybe 19 programs that we have that you could choose from. So you can go on the website. We link to the show notes. You can pick a program and then you can kind of follow it based on what your goals might be or what you're looking for. Totally.

So if you're a beginner, we have a program called MAPS starter. If you want to do what I said earlier, which is like 15 minutes a day of exercise, because that makes sense to you the way I explained it. We have a program called MAPS 15. And then we have programs that get as advanced as like competitive bodybuilders or obstacle course racers or endurance athletes, for example. So there's a lot there. I love it. Sal, this has been fantastic. And what I want to appreciate and acknowledge about your journey and the way that you present stuff, because I've listened to a ton of your content now in preparation of this interview,

is you can tell you've had a lot of moments in life where you've reflected back that there's not like a clear, like one exact way that this has to be done. But yet that doesn't prevent you from talking about the thing that works for most people in the general right way. And it leads to this way that you explain things with a lot of compassion and reflection. And you can hear that through your voice. It feels like you're sort of the bigger brother for us all. And we're trying to figure out this space of straight training and weight loss and other things. But you're doing it in a way where you're like, hey, listen, you've heard a lot of things out there. You've been influenced by a lot of people. But I'm just going to show you in like a compassionate way. And I'm going to teach you about a way that

you do it and then I'm going to teach you to do it to like lead with love internally. So I really appreciate that in the way that you lead. There's a lot of different ways that people in your space and my space lead. And I can feel that through the way that you present your content and share your story. So just want to say thank you for that. I appreciate that a lot. That means a lot to me. I've worked with a lot of people. This is hard. It's challenging. Modern life is not organized to make you healthy and fit. It's organized to make you unhealthy, obese and sick. It just is that way just on accident. Okay.

But so it is challenging. It is difficult. There is a way to do it. And, and you can do it. You can 100% do it, but definitely be empathetic to yourself. This is not a linear progression. You will stumble. You will find challenges.

It'll be, you know, two steps forward, one step. It's just how it is. But you'll move forward. I promise you. You just have to approach it the right way. And I will say this. And it's not, you know, this is not me selling my show or anything. like that. Ninety-five percent of the stuff that's out there, especially in popular fitness media,

is garbage. Turn it off, shut it off. These are fitness fanatics talking to each other or people trying to sell you all kinds of different products. They either don't know what they're talking about or they're just trying to make a quick buck and it's just a lot of bad stuff out there. So turn most of it off. It's bad. So I hate to say that. It's just totally true. Yeah. Well, we'll link to your show in The show notes, people definitely check it out. Sal, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me on. Hi, everyone, Drew here.

Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about.

It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free, and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for Whole Body Health,

and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-O-H-I-T dot com and click on the tab that says, try this.